


only guiding light

by archiveofyoumom



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Feels, Canon Compliant, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Conditioning, Flashbacks, POV Multiple, fuck the russo bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:35:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21568513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archiveofyoumom/pseuds/archiveofyoumom
Summary: takes place immediately after The Fight on the bridge
Kudos: 5
Collections: Wilder Mind





	only guiding light

**Author's Note:**

> since we all agree CATWS was the best movie ever made, i wanted to start there. inspired by a twitter post, Mumford and Sons lyrics, and my intense love for Bucky Barnes <3

when i heard your voice

the distance caught me by surprise again

and i know you claim that you're alright

but fix your eyes on me

i guess i'm all you have

and i swear you'll see the dawn again

well i know i had it all on the line

but don't just sit with folded hands and become blind

cause even when there is no star in sight

you'll always be my only guiding light

\- "Guiding Light" Mumford and Sons

"He looked right at me but he didn't even know me"

Steve knew how he must sound. He knew Nat was injured. He knew they were in the back of an unmarked van on their way to who knows where. But he couldn't seem to make himself care. The moment that mask came off nothing else mattered.

Bucky

It was impossible- a miracle- after all these years. The last time he had seen that face, heard that voice… Some things fade but the image of Bucky falling from the train that day was still sharp enough to cut. 

"How is that even possible" Sam's voice came from somewhere far away but failed to bring him back there.

It was a fair question. One he hadn't managed to ask himself yet, somehow he already knew.  _ Zola _ . That doctor with the insect eyes and the sick smile. He had hurt Bucky, done something to him. Steve still remembered finding him strapped to that table reciting his name and rank with vacant eyes. It was those same eyes, empty behind a pointed gun, that he had looked into today. 

_ Whatever he did must have helped Bucky survive the fall.  _ It made some sort of sick sense- that Bucky would be the one to follow him into the twenty-first century. His own personal ghost. All Steve could hear was the rapid beating of his own heart. Bucky was alive. He was  _ alive _ . The awful implications of this extraordinary fact were there, scratching below the surface of his hope and disbelief. If Bucky had been alive all these years, while Steve was frozen deep in the ice… 

"None of that's your fault, Steve" Nat interrupted, and he realized he must have said some of it out loud. 

He looked over at her, still bleeding from a bullet hole in her shoulder. The bullet that Bucky had put there. Whatever had happened to him in the seventy years since he fell, whatever had made him into the adept machine that almost killed him and Natasha today, it could not have been good. Bucky wouldn't have chosen this; he wouldn't have gone down without a fight. Ancient memories threatened to come out of hiding, but Steve didn't need to relive them to know. In every single one Bucky was  _ good _ . He was kind and he was righteous. Bucky had always been there for him, back when he was nothing but 5' 4" and trouble. 

"Even when I had nothing I had Bucky"

_ He didn't even know me. _

\---------

"Mission report" 

That was a command. A command directed at him. He felt the cold stares of the half a dozen assault rifles trained on him. They were expecting something from him. His body was pulled taunt by adrenaline. Commands require responses. He needed to respond. Why could he not respond?

"Mission report, now"

The man who had issued the order, Secretary Alexander Pierce, began moving closer in his peripheral vision. He noticed the approach, in the same way that he noticed the guns surrounding him and the IV in his right arm, yet these things did not seem to matter in the way they should have. This was a malfunction, but he couldn't identify the cause of the problem, nor the source of the images flashing across his unfocused gaze- bloody snow, a buzz saw, blonde hair. Silent screams from the man with the blonde hair. The man was taller and broader than he should have been. Why was he so big? There was a metallic taste in his mouth when he tried to imagine the man's face, so he focused on the hair instead. The blond hair that had reappeared and called him Bucky. 

He didn't flinch when Secretary Pierce raised his hand and hit him across the face. His head snapped to the right and he suddenly found he was able to speak.

"The man on the bridge who was he?" Pierce looked at him carefully before answering. 

"You met him earlier this week on another assignment." 

This answer failed to end the barrage of images in his head. He didn't understand what was happening. 

"I knew him" 

The words came from somewhere deep inside of him- a place he couldn't bring himself to look at directly. Saying it was as dangerous as it was imperative. He knew it would hurt. But it felt absolutely vital that those words be let out. 

Secretary Pierce licked his lips before pulling up a chair. 

"Your work has been a gift to mankind. You shaped the century. Now I need you to do it, one more time"

He fought to keep his expression neutral- willed his eyes off of the ground despite the overwhelming sense of dread that had begun to take over his body. He knew what was coming, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it. He felt a sickness that had nothing to do with the flickering yellow lights. Why couldn't he get ahold of himself? Why couldn't he get the image of that blonde hair out of his head? 

_ "But I knew him"  _

He bit down on the words, hard, before saying them out loud. Then shivered as Pierce exhaled and stood abruptly. 

"Prep him" 

Pierce was talking to a technician as if he wasn't sitting right there, struggling to control his breathing, resigned to the punishment awaiting him. 

"But he's been out of cryo for too long-" 

"Then wipe him and start over" 

He tasted bile in the back of his throat as two men forced him back against the chair. The methodic whirring of machinery matched his increasing heart rate and cold metal clamped onto his flesh arm. Restraining him. As if he could have resisted. As if he wouldn't have sat there and taken whatever they gave him. Indifferent faces loomed above him; he hoped they didn't notice his clenched fists shaking. 

He had been through this before. The process. The pain. It was almost routine. At times, he knew, it had even been some sort of brutal relief- to have weakness and doubt seared from his brain- to be made pure again. But this was different. This time, he was losing something, and it had been a long time since he had anything to lose. 

These were his thoughts before they were drowned out by the sound of his own screams.

_ "But I knew him"  _


End file.
